


Fill the Earth

by SimplexityJane



Series: In the Beginning [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: M/M, No Beach Divorce, Old Age Death I Promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how Charles protects his people for fifty years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fill the Earth

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is in the same 'verse as Fires in the Garden of Eden, The Name Thereof, and Lights in the Firmament of Heaven, and is probably the one that doesn't stand on its own as well as the others, but you don't have to read the others to understand it, I don't think. I'm still too lazy to make this a proper series, sorry. Eventually.

“Erik, please! There are good, innocent men on those ships.” The missiles stilled in the air, and Charles had almost died, and he wanted so badly to say something about the _men_.

That wouldn’t help him, though. Erik’s last memory of his mother, the only person he ever _loved,_ had been her being held by men who could have been innocent in any number of crimes. These men here might not know what they were doing, but in Erik’s mind—

“Don’t turn their children into you,” he said, knowing Erik wouldn’t forgive him, _knowing_ this might turn Erik on him all the same. _So be it_.

Erik turned to him, raw pain written on his face. Charles couldn’t read his mind, but Charles had never been one to pry without permission. He knew every combination of expressions a human made, and more, he knew what their minds looked like when they made them—he could extrapolate a pattern, and good God, Erik was in _so_ much pain.

The missiles didn’t move, though, which was a start.

“If you do this, there will be _at least_ _one_ mutant child who knows what you have done. They will hunt you, and they will _kill you_ , Erik. And Shaw _wanted_ that, goddammit. He wanted _this_. He’s the one who wanted us separate, and divided, and weak, Erik. He wanted you to become the monster he was, just to hurt more people. Please, _do not do this_.”

Erik was crying, and he turned away from Charles. Charles’s fists clenched of their own accord, but Erik was muttering under his breath and lowering the missiles into the ocean. They were disassembling themselves, too. When he finished that he pulled the helmet off his head and reached out with his mind. Charles mixed their minds together again, grateful to find the spaces Erik had carved out for him still there. There was a numb horror that Charles refused to force away along the edges, but Erik steeled himself and turned to Charles.

“You’re right, they cannot remember this,” Charles said. He apologized to each man as he wiped the memory from them, inserting a vague suggestion that there was almost a fight, but luckily the Soviets were ordered back.

“And the missing missiles?” Erik asked. Charles connected with one of the men again, a high ranking officer, and made him note in the manifests that flaws were detected in missiles before they boarded, so they only brought half of their cargo.

“I’ll have to find the navy yard they shipped out of and make a change in the records there,” Charles said. He turned to Azazel, who was standing with Janos and Angel, and smiled at him. “I have the coordinates. If you could take me close to them, I believe this entire incident could be taken care of.”

Moira was staring at him, then raised her chin.

“If you make me forget, Charles, I will never forgive you,” she said. Charles nodded.

“I’ll make them forget instead,” he promised. He turned to the others, who were standing in states of exhaustion and anger (in Alex and Hank’s cases). “Our first priority from now on has to be the survival of our people. Our differences, our crimes—we must forget them, and focus on protection. We cannot be the aggressors in any war that may come, not if we wish to keep human allies.” He hated it so much. _We should be able to live together_ , he thought, and Erik’s internal scoff was one that remembered his heritage nearly killing him and destroying eight million people. _I suppose pragmatism is more important than idealism at this point_.

Erik was smiling as Azazel took Charles to the shipyard, where the manifests suddenly noted weapons that had been destroyed before a boat left, and then to Washington, where there was quite a bit of wrangling before the very thought of mutants had deserted them. He also scrubbed away some sexism, because Moira was a good friend and a useful ally. She deserved more than they were going to give her.

“There is much we have to do,” he told them when they were finally home.

“First we have to rescue Emma,” Janos said. “She is more politically minded than the rest of us put together.”

That was the simple part. When Emma Frost saw his plan, she laughed.

“You think you can afford that?” she asked.

Raven (she was Mystique now, and it hurt that Charles had been so blind not to see her drowning right in front of him) turned into Shaw.

“I don’t know. Do you think we could afford it?” she asked. Emma smiled, letting Charles further into her mind, and they made a plan that would keep anyone from knowing about mutants.

“There are certain players who are going to be more difficult to subdue than others,” Emma said, smirking. She smirked a lot. “They claim to want to protect the human race—I have a feeling we don’t fit into their picture.”

“They liked Captain America,” Alex pointed out, going over maps. “I’m telling you, Chicago is a more strategic point for a ‘school’ than fucking Aurora.”

“Language,” Charles said. Alex shot a look at him. “There are over a hundred children who need homes in that area, and fewer in Chicago. The commute shouldn’t be horrible.”

Erik had been wary of letting any of the human parents know that their children weren’t “normal.” Charles, however, thought that it would be necessary, as most mutations would make themselves present in another way if they didn’t. This way they could smooth the reactions a bit, and if they couldn’t, they could make sure the children were protected.

“I don’t want to take children from their parents,” Charles said. Erik smiled sadly at him.

“Parents who would punish their children for something they can’t control are no parents at all,” he said.

Most of the parents, after the initial shock, supported their children. Some, however, told Charles to pack their child’s bags and never return. Those were the parents that Charles did not have mercy for, and it surprised him how brutal he could be. Often he was left holding the crying children as they drove away, soothing them and trying not to make Erik turn around like they both so desperately wanted to.

It was a pattern that continued for the next several years. Charles was the one who comforted the younger children, who held onto them when their parents would not and promised that one day the world would be different. Erik was the one the angry ones went to, the ones who hated what their families had done (sometimes he went to them, across the country or the world, and promised them something Charles didn’t like to think about). Alex, and Armando (who had to be coaxed out of pure energy form but was a teacher too), and Sean, the kids went to when they needed to get away and forget. Emma collected her special children and promised that they would rule the world.

Moira and Sean ended up married. It surprised Charles as much as anyone else. Mystique had a child with Azazel, a little boy with blue skin and the ability to teleport, and Erik’s daughter went through the school. She was much closer with Emma and moved to Washington D.C., helping pass bills that would, when mutants were revealed, protect them.

The Xavier Schools slowly became a secret organization on par with S.H.I.E.L.D. Charles let others handle the politics, focused on educating his children. There were thousands, then hundreds of thousands of them, and by the time Charles lost the ability to walk there were over a million mutants in the world. Charles won a Nobel for his schools, which fed into Ivy League colleges and led to very successful careers for most of his students.

“So many of my students have taken the burden I placed upon my shoulders and become teachers themselves,” he said. Erik was in the crowd, and no one would remark on the fact that he was his partner. Charles was a rich white man of some renown, so they didn’t care that he was queer, not now. “It is in honor of them that I accept this. Thank you all.”

Everyone who mattered knew that he wasn’t just talking about teaching, of course.

Tony Stark became a superhero, and Charles sighed.

“No, we are not going public,” he said, and then he repeated himself for the next three years. When New York was attacked everyone wanted to help, but Erik made a very impassioned speech about the human capacity for hate, and they kept their secret for another year.

“They will have to support us now,” Erik said in bed. Charles rolled his eyes, but Erik was right, and so Charles invited Pepper Potts and her partner to tea.

“So there are a lot of you—of mutants,” Tony Stark said. Charles nodded, and Erik smiled. They were two old men, but they were still incredibly dangerous. They could know that, but Tony Stark didn’t need to know that. “And no one’s figured that out yet?”

“Lobbying, pressure on certain parties with _vested interests_ , and--”

“Erik’s fondness for impassioned speeches,” Charles finished. “Added to that an early detection system, and yes, we have been able to keep our people safe for fifty years. However, that will not always be the case. And some of our people only have physical differences to humans, not power like we do. We have long feared a war.”

“Humans use differences they have to kill each other,” Erik said. “To know that there are those of us completely unlike them…” Erik shrugged.

The difference between Pepper and Tony and mutants was that they still thought of themselves as human. Pepper Potts could incinerate a man, and Tony Stark could completely halt production in an enemy’s camp, but they would never feel like they were separate from humans.

They still agreed that mutants should be protected. They didn’t agree to go to war for them, but Charles knew what would happen if something like that came to pass.

“Do you think they will be as good at it as we are?” Erik asked. They were getting old, even though mutants aged more mildly than humans did.

“I think they will have very different problems than we do,” Charles said. _Besides, we laid down framework so that they don’t_ have _to be as good as we are._

 _Good, because there is no way they will be_.

Somehow they lived to see the first war, both of them. It wasn’t so much a war as Pepper Potts yelling at people and Erik yelling at people and Charles being the voice of reason (and yelling at people, but only in private). Their dinner appointments suddenly became strategy meetings, and sometimes they lasted for hours, but it ended in six months.

There would be no registration for at least a decade, though, and Charles thought he could live with that.

“Do you ever think of the worlds where this did not happen?” Erik asked. Charles frowned at him. “Where I became like Shaw. Where we died on that beach. Can you imagine what they must be like now?”

“Horrible, I’m sure,” Charles said. “Go to sleep, Erik.”

It was not that night, but it was at night, that Erik’s mind drifted and died, and Charles’s followed it without question.

In this world at least, when they died together, they died happy.


End file.
